Kevin Haskin: Hopefully, we're right to applaud Bowlsby

At least everyone who wants to solidify the Big 12. Which includes about anyone who cheers for Kansas or Kansas State, given the worrisome hand-wringing that went on the past two years with conference realignment.

The credentials Bowlsby brings are impeccable. He even started in college athletics as an athlete, wrestling for Moorhead State.

Of all the remarks Bowlsby made during his formal introduction Friday as the new Big 12 commissioner, this one intrigued me most:

And to think, just a couple of years ago everyone was saying the same thing about Larry Scott when he was hired from outside the realm of college athletics to oversee the Pac-12.

Now, Bowlsby leaves that very conference — one that failed in breaking up the Big 12, mind you — to take over the Big 12.

Oh, how this collegiate landscape changes.

Whatever confidence Bowlsby possesses doesn’t seem to be misguided. Why leave an athletic, and academic, powerhouse such as Stanford if you have any reservations you can’t make the Big 12 manageable?

And that is what the commissioner’s seat in Dallas is all about — manageability. He must create, facilitate and manipulate an environment in which it is possible — heck, advantageous — to co-exist in the same conference with Texas.

In doing so, Bowlsby is keenly aware of the behemoth in burnt orange.

“The University of Texas is always going to be an 800-pound gorilla in college athletics,’’ he acknowledged.

The new commissioner obviously doesn’t need wrestling experience to realize just how difficult it is to go to the mat with UT on administrative issues. The imbalance created by a league heavyweight that tips the scales so unevenly led to shakeups each of the past two years as the Big 12 lost four charter members.

The result was a near-fall, which the league narrowly survived.

Yet the conference did survive, with a 10-team grouping Bowlsby said is “homogenous.’’

If that is true, and Texas is indeed on board, so much so that it realizes its best interests are to make this particular conference viable in the long term, then an opportunity exists for the Big 12 to strengthen. That opportunity must be seized. Quickly.

First, the league can’t be perceived as fractured and vulnerable.

“It’s one of the early initiatives I need to undertake, along with staff,’’ said Bowlsby, who went on to add he is “encouraged and impressed with (conference) stability and mutual commitment. I have no reservations.’’

If so, then three matters of business are in order.

One, Bowlsby must tour the conference. Immediately. Broaden your “campus experience.’’ Meet with athletes, coaches, administrators, even boosters. Make yourself known. As trivial as this sounds, it is important to be visible, and I know it would be particularly comforting at K-State and KU.

Two, seal the new first-tier television rights deal with ESPN, then convince members to commit to a longer grant of rights fees, which initially was set at six years.

Three, use steps one and two to determine if expansion is warranted ... unless expansion is a means to further the reportedly lucrative deals currently under negotiation. Then, well ...

“I don’t think simply the attainment of a number makes sense for us,’’ Bowlsby said. “We have to add institutions, if we ever do, that are going to specifically fortify and make the sum of the parts exceed the whole.’’

A lengthy grant of media rights fees among Big 12 members could make the whole solid at 10 members.

However, when Bowlsby addressed the addition of West Virginia as a geographical misfit for the Big 12, he said the “electronic footprint’’ the Mountaineers provided on the East Coast was more important.

The addition of, say, Florida State, with its big market and football cache, could widen bandwidth into a size E.

None of this is going to be easy — whether it’s getting Texas to play fair, growing the league to 12 members, splitting again into divisions, achieving equitable sharing of revenue over the long term, determining championship sites or reviving a title game in football.

Yet if harmony truly exists within this league, Bowlsby strikes me — heck, everyone — as a leader we not only can applaud now, but also over time.

Nice feeling for a conference that just a few months ago was all but declared dead.